[Firestorm PBR Release Is Out]

I politely dissent against the majority opinion in this thread. I welcome the recent PBR changes, I think SL looks a lot better with PBR.  SL21B in particular looks amazing.

If SL is supposed to be the premier metaverse experience, it should look good. PBR is a step in this direction. And I don't even have a supercomputer, yet the PBR viewer has been running well.

I'm genuinely concerned by the resistance to PBR's adoption, and I think it indicates that these forums are a poor source of actionable feedback for Linden Lab.

[SL should have object decay]

Ban lines should not be allowed for waterfront or roadside parcels on mainland.

[Where do we stand with these forums?]

Just now, Cristiano Midnight said:

I log into SL daily, and use it more now than I ever have. Not sure why you think that. My not posting a lot here doesn't mean I am not involved in SL.

I had misread your post about your absence from SL. Disregard my previous claim.

My point still stands. Forums do keep people connected to SL while they are away, but for the most part they are a detriment when they become the focus themselves. Second Life itself is perfectly capable of hosting general discussions and should be encouraged, not watered down.

[Where do we stand with these forums?]

Just now, Cristiano Midnight said:

A significant portion of my users no longer use SL or rarely sign in. Hell, I was out of SL for 10 years after the experiences with crazy people escalated to a dangerous RL situation for me. Groups moved to Discord because of how unstable the group chat is in SL. Also, the communication tools in general are terrible for a social platform. Plus people use forums when they can't log in to still be able to connect and discuss. I think they add to the experience, not detract from them, whether it is forums, Discord, Reddit, etc..

You are a forum host yourself, and you hardly log into Second Life either. If anything you demonstrate exactly the issue with forums. They siphon away engagement, your experiences are nothing but examples of this.

[Where do we stand with these forums?]

Forums are antithetical to Second Life.

If Second Life is the premier virtual world experience, then Second Life is supposed to be where you meet people, not on 2000s style forums. Instead, there should be forums in world, ideally styled as public squares, where general discussion topics are the focus. This would be an immersive in-world offering that would further differentiate Second Life from generic internet communication platforms (Discord, Twitter, etc).

As long as Second Life does not offer in-world forums and instead keeps these text based ones, it shows that their value proposition is not all they claim. Their continued hosting and support for the forums is, in my view, a signal that degrades their brand.

Forums are also a direct competitor to Second Life as a entertainment platform. Forum users post memes and share jokes and media here to entertain what seems to be a small circle of friends. It makes little sense that Linden Lab would be hosting a forum to entertain people to the detriment of Second Life. Such users can log in to Second Life to socialize instead, and so could the Moles and company Employees. When this is not the case, it suggests that the company is not dogfooding its product and that the company is on autopilot.

Worst yet, it signals that the company is struggling with user engagement metrics and needs as much SEO as it can get, to the peril of any contributor to these forums, whose words and ideas will continue to be scraped to train AI models with no consideration to any forum poster. Therefore, the existence of the forums cannot be good for either Linden Lab or its users.

[Who - aside from users - will benefit from the Mobile Ap]

Many of these posts are shortsighted.

 

Mobile, from the perspective of the business, is nothing but upside.  There is zero risk of driving away existing high value customers while increasing service availability to currently untapped markets. 

First off, Linden Lab is not stupid and understands the shortcomings with mobile.  One should expect the Mobile app to be more focused on avatar customization and shopping.  I expect the Marketplace to be more tightly integrated with the SL client, and there is a possibility that the incumbent vendor platform, Casper, becomes integrated as well.  That alone should drive growth, as avatar apps are very popular, and the extant content in SL (if carefully curated) looks fantastic compared to that of other platforms. Once users fall in love with their avatars, they will be strongly incented to try out the Desktop experience.

A benefit of the Mobile experience, even if limited, is that it forces Linden Lab to think hard about solving issues with the current platform architecture that would otherwise be seen as nitpicking.  Therefore it is a good project for Linden Lab engineering, which has some highly talented engineers that may be underutilized or underappreciated. Currently, the platform is slow to load and requires large amounts of data to be transferred in order to render the full experience. The platform is also old in terms of graphics technology, although they have recently added PBR, a much welcome improvement. By giving their engineers a clever incentive, Linden Lab should be able to produce a more optimized Second Life experience on the Desktop. An effort to ship a Mobile experience is thus a driver for growth. I expect SL's netcode and architecture, even on the Desktop experience, to significantly improve.

These benefits do not stop at retrofitted improvements to the current platform.  Once the platform is rearchitected for mobile, it should bring more ambitious development efforts, such as VR, closer or within reach, especially as VR experiences are sensitive to degradations in network latency and graphics performance.

Financially speaking, investing in a Mobile experience is mostly CapEx and little OpEx. This increases the valuation of Linden Lab even if the app generates minimal traction, and one would be shortsighted to believe anyone at the helm would say no to developing a Mobile experience.

From a marketing perspective, shipping a Mobile experience is a strong signal that the company backing Second Life is invested in the experience and should generate growth in MAU from simple organic search and WOM referrals. The fact that there is no current Mobile experience signals that Second Life is ancient tech. This may lead to decreased conversion as many choose to have their avatar experience on IMVU, which boasts a far larger userbase, but is actually the worse platform.

Furthermore, do not underestimate the importance of staying connected.  Many people on Second Life live very rich virtual lives, and therefore want to stay connected with their friends.  The connections that users make on this platform feel very real, and this seems to be a constant across all user segments, as even trolls end up forming lasting friendships on SL. That Linden Lab should ship a Mobile app should provide peace of mind to users who already use third-parties to connect to the grid, in terms of account security and user experience.

 

Long story short, Mobile will drive innovation, growth, and keep friends together. All for zero risk, because current customers can continue to use SL on the Desktop.  It's either Win-Win or Win-Neutral.  We should all be for this.

[Why do so many new players not get the inventory system?]

SL is full of knowledge you only acquire by playing it.

1. You need to wear some pre-mesh items and it's not immediately obvious that they don't matter entirely or at all. Eyebrows? Yes these control the shape of the eyebrow, sort of, but not the texture of the eyebrow on the mesh head.
2. The inventory system itself is full of quirks, like Add versus Wear, which throw pretty much every new user. Experienced users will smugly chime in that you should be using Add not Wear to manage what you currently have on, and yet it is still not the default.
3. Wearing up to 38 attachments as "outfits" is a different system compared to other games, where you equip items in pre-configured slots.
4. The delay between attaching an object and seeing it render in world makes it a bit difficult to learn what is going on. Not everyone has a mental model of servers and latency. When an action is performed and the user gets no feedback from the interface, and has not been educated in how SL works, they will assume funny things and appear severely confused to the experienced user.

[2024 - Will LL finally fully acknowledge the Adult side of SL?]

1 hour ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Honestly, is there anyone that signs up for Second Life that doesn't know that s e x can be part of their SL experience if they choose it to be?

I really don't see how LL advertising slex will draw more people.

It will just make themselves look like sleezy porn merchants.

😂

I agree with this. SL simply needs to show what an avatar looks like and people will imagine how it can be used for s e x. I think they are doing a good job keeping it subtle. If anything they need to make driving and sailing work better, among other wholesome activities.

[why having or beeing an alt is consider bad?]

On 3/8/2024 at 12:13 PM, usedcars said:

Some people will befriend the same person without telling them..or stalking.    Others see it as an insult or that you are having other relationships on the side when you are with them.  I have a dozen and I don't usually tell anyone that.  Maybe two of them to my partner.  

This is exactly it.  The use of alts to befriend the same person multiple times is rampant in SL, and it is difficult for the average person to detect unless they have highly developed spidey senses from being on SL for way too long. Therefore, everyone will assume any new face is actually an alt just to be on the safe side. They don't have a problem with alts themselves, they have a problem with deception.

[Nobody goes to the Community Exhibition in WelcomeHub.]

33 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

As I mentioned earlier, they come out and say hello and we often direct them to.the tutorial.  Some go, some don't.  It wouldn't matter where you.put the Community section or the Social section as some people just don't care to read/listen to tutorials.  I certainly didn't trudge through them when I was new 15 yrs ago.  There's not a thing you or I or LL can do to avoid that.  I do agree that the Community section should be nearer the Social Plaza.  

The one question I get most often there is...where can I meet some people who (fill in the blank).  

It's great that you get a kick out of meeting newbies, but it still guts the tutorial. As it stands it's not even obvious that it's a tutorial. Newbie logs in, and sees two paths, one has people having fun (Social Plaza), the other has usually nobody except a lost newbie and a mentor ignoring them (tutorial). It's a terrible design unless the design is meant to make tutorials look stupid.

If you want to meet newbies, you still could if they put the tutorial in the way, and they would still walk up to you to receive your wisdom. The tutorial is extremely short and takes no more than 5 minutes of reading to complete. Or, delete the tutorial entirely.

Either would be preferable to the current situation where those who choose to go through the tutorial are split off from the Social Plaza. Both tutorial readers and tutorial skippers should end up in the same place. And the Community Exhibition should be right there too.

[Lack of friends...]

On 1/29/2024 at 5:41 AM, Calista Evergreen said:

If you are new to second life...forget about making friends.   unless you know second life people it is hard to make friends.   its a flaw second life creators need to work on.   make it easier to make friends when you are a newbie.

Groups are insular in SL because the meta has changed from real world. Alts can be scary and there's zero privacy in SL, so people are very guarded with their friendships and words. If you come on too strong with wanting to be a friend collector, you will give people the ick and have a bad time.

You do have a point though, it would be fun to have a randomized matched activity that will group you up with someone in SL and bring people closer. But then the Lindens would have to build it, support it, and also provide the content for these activities.

[Help on making my own AO]

Learn how link_message works and then you can use ZHAO II as a starting point

Edit: but honestly you might just want to use a real AO hud as a base if you're not a scripter, and then just change out the animations.

[Nobody goes to the Community Exhibition in WelcomeHub.]

11 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Your solution still has the new users going THROUGH the tutorial to get to.the people.

That's exactly my point. Sure, they don't have to read, but right now they are very easily misled and walk straight toward the mass of people in Social Plaza. Argue all you want about arrows on the ground, they still do it. It's natural to want to approach other people and interact, and this guts the tutorial entirely.

[Nobody goes to the Community Exhibition in WelcomeHub.]

 Well, for one, the Community Exhibition isn't placed over the spot on the map that gets most traffic.  Ideally, they should move the Social Plaza over to the Community Exhibition. They should overlap, even, so that experienced users don't feel like they're ditching their friends in over to look at the exhibition. This would have the dual benefit of encouraging new users to wade through the tutorial in their quest to find real people.  I notice many new users head straight for the Social Plaza where everyone is standing, because they want to talk to real people in SL, not trudge through tutorials. Right now, when they do that, they short circuit the entire tutorial (and Community Exhibition).

On top of that, the tutorial is stupid. It barely teaches you how to pilot your avatar. Once it does, you're prodded to buy Linden dollars and learn how to shop. It makes SL feel like a Gacha game for clothing. The tutorial should paint a more exciting picture of SL. As it stands, it makes it very clear to the user that they are the product.